Jens Lekman finds himself in strange places

WHEN singer-songwriter Jens Lekman was checking out apartments to rent in Kortedala, a suburban neighborhood of his Swedish hometown Gothenburg, one landlord made an odd case for Lekman to move in. The previous occupant died in the bathroom, he said, and it took three months for anyone to notice.

“He drowned in the bathtub,” Lekman says. “I asked the landlord ‘Why are you telling me this?’ They thought that I would like it. It was their key point in getting me to take the apartment.”

Lekman soon moved in and began writing and recording his second full-length album, “Night Falls Over Kortedala,” though not before giving his studio the more optimistic name of Kortedala Beauty Center. It was an appropriate gesture for Lekman, who comes from a long tradition of cracked pop dreamers like Jonathan Richman, Burt Bacharach and Frankie Valli. Lekman’s songs play off the conflict between his misfit isolation and Vegas-sized hopes for romance, all set to pan-ethnic folk, electronica beats and moon-eyed ‘50s teen pop.

The effect makes him not only one of the today’s wittiest and most able songsmiths, but also one of the most detailed and believable. On “I’m Leaving You Because I Don’t Love You,” a jilted lover reaches not for her vodka bottle or Klonopin stash, but for an asthma inhaler to stop hyperventilating. “A Postcard to Nina” finds him interrogated by his date’s father, who doesn’t know his daughter is a lesbian who brought Lekman to cover for her, with Lekman lamenting that his dinner is “Turning Into ‘Buffalo 66.’ ”

“I start writing songs first as an entertainer, and I like funny stories that wrap up with dignity,” Lekman said. “I need to write a sitcom, but something with warmth, not one where the dad comes home and he’s treated like an idiot.”

Though a chart staple in Sweden, Lekman recently moved to Melbourne, Australia, hoping for a bit more hospitality (and fewer corpses in his bathtub) than Kortedala had to offer. But no matter where Lekman lives, it seems he winds up on the fringes.

“Australia’s beautiful, but I’m not too into Australian culture,” Lekman said. “The people I hang out with aren’t typical, but even the skinniest intellectuals here are surfers.”

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-- August.Brown@latimes.com

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JENS LEKMAN

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